The Exchanges

Q You said binary thinking there. I feel like everyone today has to do meaningful work, and all my work needs to be meaningful. It seems in, you know, 300 years ago, people did not look for meaningful work. They, they were quite happy just Doing the farm work, and that was okay. My first question is, what makes work meaningful?

A Well, I think that meaningful work is really work where you can feel that in some way, through your labour, you are Either reducing the suffering or increasing the pleasure of another human being. And if you feel that, then your work feels meaningful. So let's, let's, let's think of some examples, right? So let's say you, you lay down wooden floors for, for a living. And at the end of the day, you can look back and your floor is, you know, you made a wooden floor. Someone walks across it. It could be satisfying for years, decades, hundreds of years. Um, that's very satisfying. Um, The, the problem of modern society is that many, many jobs are meaningful technically in the sense they are bringing, um, a reduction of suffering or an increase in pleasure in people's lives. The problem is scale. The problem is that people work within gigantic organizations in processes that can last so long that people lose the thread Um, let's think about football. How long is a football game? 90 minutes, right? It's not a surprise that a game is 90 minutes, because we like relatively short spans. Um, uh, it, it's more exciting, it's more engaging for us if something's 90 minutes. If you imagine a, a football game that lasts seven years, that's not gonna be a very interesting football game. And also, it doesn't take place on one pitch. It takes place on 140 pitches. And it lasts seven years, and y…

AI assessment note: “meaningful work is really work where you can feel that in some way”

Q comes from the ambiguity of not knowing what's to come, I think as a leader today, Right. Well, then I must be clear. I must be very direct, and know the answer, and show the way. The trouble is, I don't always know the answer. And so, should we be confidently directing the crowd, even though we don't know the answer, or is it okay to say, I don't know?

A Of course, I mean, you know, Socrates, go back to ancient Greece, Socrates, apparently the wisest man, Uh, in, uh, in the ancient world was asked, you know, on what basis his wisdom rested? And he said, because I know that I don't know. And so unlike, you know, his whole, whole, the birth of Western philosophy is the idea that by admitting and sensing one's ignorance, one can actually make progress. That the enemy of, of progress are people who think they know the answer. And that, you know, has to be the case that in, in many situations that a naive inquiry is, um, is often the gateway to, Serious discoveries. And, you know, people who are leaders in their field often have about them, um, a courage in asking the so-called obvious question, which isn't obvious at all. They're able to put themselves in the shoes and they're able to inhabit without shame the position of someone who doesn't know, doesn't understand. So they might stick up their hand and go, what's everybody saying? You know, we, we think we know what we're talking about. Do we? What, you know, and questioning from first premises. These are often very useful moves.

AI assessment note: “inhabit without shame the position of someone who doesn't know”

Q You might not be at that company. You might not be alive. Fingers crossed you will be, but it is so long. For me as a leader, and for anyone as a leader, where there is very long feedback loops, but gosh, I want my people to be Feeling like they are working on meaningful work. Is there anything that I can do or I should, I should think about?

A I called it artistic problem a minute ago. It's, you know, you also define it as a problem of the imagination that people literally forget. Um, I mean, storytellers, you know, if somebody writes a very long novel, halfway through often people go, well, so we've just seen that so-and-so, you know, went to the house. And so there's a kind of recap of what happened or a, A reminder. And I think, you know, we need this in, in our own lives, often a reminder of who we are, where we're going, what the trajectory is, and an evocation of it, um, uh, through imaginative means. So you might want to, you know, investment that you made seven years ago, you might want to show some pictures, show film, go make a visit to, to the place that, you know, just to kind of bring it back to life, um, what's actually happened.

AI assessment note: “a reminder of who we are, where we're going, what the trajectory is”

Q Do you agree with the removal from cyclicality of life? You know, Ray Dalio has written a book in terms of how we look at, you know, I think it was in the Actually, although COVID seemed completely, uh, unique in terms of its impact on humanity, actually, it's cyclical. And there was another one in the 1700. Is this actually still within cycles?

A Well, I mean, I think, um, in many ways, yes, but also it's tremendously helpful, I think, for us as individuals to look out for these patterns because, um, well, it simplifies life. As, as we know, whenever you see a pattern, what you're essentially doing is removing, um, The unfamiliar and the possibly dangerous from a situation because you're thinking, ah, okay, I know what this is going to be like or what this is like. I mean, we, we get this with, with people, don't we? After a certain age, you think, I've met this person before. Um, of course you haven't met exactly that person, but you've met someone a bit like them before, because there are only so many human types. And ultimately there are only so many human situations in many, many cases. I mean, they say, you know, literary theorists like to say there are only eight stories in the world. There may be 12, there may be 15, but there are not a thousand. I think that's the point. To be able to spot these patterns, I think, calms us down, because one of the ills of the modern age is this belief that we are always in unparalleled, uncharted waters, and that's an exhausting, and I think untrue, um, uh, you know, um, perspective on things. I mean, for example, you know, people were filming at the time of the American election, a lot of doubts about where America's going, etc. You know, a Roman historian would go, oh, we've b…

AI assessment note: “in many ways, yes, but also it's tremendously helpful, I think, for us”

Q Is the status element like a lack of respect for ourselves? Like we need other people to recognize us because we don't recognize ourselves as being good enough?

A Yes, and, and of course people are, um, different in, you know, the, the amount of estimation that they have independently of others. So we all know people who are fairly, you know, we call them robust. In other words, um, they don't fold simply because the crowd is not acclaiming them. Sometimes they might even be emboldened. They might feel thrilled by the disdain of the majority. But, you know, they can maintain self-belief despite an absence of adulation. And then we know at the other end of the spectrum, people who will literally not be able to choose what to have for lunch without aligning their taste with yours. So worried are they about the consequences of in any way diverging from the views of others. We call these people people pleasers, um, Yes, men or women. Uh, you know, these are people who, for whom any departure from external, uh, the external verdict is going to be extremely dangerous. And, you know, and on the whole, psychologists would argue, you know, I think it's almost common sense, that the amount of independence that you're capable of in adulthood is, um, directly related to the amount of love and esteem you were given as a child from people who esteemed you For yourself, as opposed to for anything that you did. So, um, you know, whenever you see a very robust individual who seems not to care what others are thinking of them, probably there's somebody wh…

AI assessment note: “Yes, and, and of course people are, um, different in, you know, the”

Q It's why the Greeks had the unbundling of the gods, isn't it? The god of sun. Right. Whether it was lucky that we won because the sun shone on us.

A Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and, and you know, the Greeks are obsessed by, by hubris, by the concept of forgetting The, the role of divine intervention. That's, that's the definition of hubris. Um, and I was thinking that you could, you are the master of your fate. That, that is, that, you know, all Greek legends, histories are all about this. It's, it's only ever about human arrogance. So clearly they were tempted by this. We've gone hook, line, and sinker for this temptation. Anyway, let's come back to this, this concept of loser. So, so for example, the Romans were obsessed by the goddess of fortune, Fortuna, all around Italy. All around the Italian peninsula, they had shrines, the goddess of Fortuna. If your ship came in, if you were a merchant, if you were a venture capitalist in ancient Rome, um, and things did, things went well, they had venture capitalists, um, uh, more or less. Uh, if things went well, you would immediately go and thank the goddess of fortune because you knew it wasn't really you. I mean, you think it's all you.

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and, and you know, the Greeks are obsessed by, by hubris”

Q Why would a parent be unhappy with a child being successful?

A You're thinking in common sense terms, um, because, because there's tremendous envy In, within families and within people. Envy is one of the key motivators. And people are envious of their children. Very strange thought. I mean, one thinks, you know, surely that's not possible. Yes, absolutely. In other words, people can be threatened by the achievements. You know, there are people who think their children are too beautiful, uh, that their children are too clever, their children have got advantages they didn't have. It's, you have to be fairly settled in yourself to allow a child to have a better life than you had. I, I know the cliches that every parent wants that. No. I don't, I mean, I, experience does not bear that out. That's a nice story, and obviously very true in some cases, but in other cases, no. It's more complicated. The, the message might be something like, you know, do well, but not better than me, or do well so that you don't humiliate me, but not so well that you threaten me. And so, you know, odd, odd messages are sent down the generations. Very odd messages. Um, you know, succeed financially, but don't be happy. That can be a message that is sent through. You're, you're allowed to make money, but the price you must pay is you must screw up your relationships. For example, that can be a message that's given by an unconsciously directed message.

AI assessment note: “there's tremendous envy In, within families... people can be threatened by the achievements.”

Q You said binary thinking there. I feel like everyone today has to do meaningful work, and all my work needs to be meaningful. It seems in, you know, 300 years ago, people did not look for meaningful work. They, they were quite happy just Doing the farm work, and that was okay. My first question is, what makes work meaningful?

A Well, I think that meaningful work is really work where you can feel that in some way, through your labour, you are Either reducing the suffering or increasing the pleasure of another human being. And if you feel that, then your work feels meaningful. So let's, let's, let's think of some examples, right? So let's say you, you lay down wooden floors for, for a living. And at the end of the day, you can look back and your floor is, you know, you made a wooden floor. Someone walks across it. It could be satisfying for years, decades, hundreds of years. Um, that's very satisfying. Um, The, the problem of modern society is that many, many jobs are meaningful technically in the sense they are bringing, um, a reduction of suffering or an increase in pleasure in people's lives. The problem is scale. The problem is that people work within gigantic organizations in processes that can last so long that people lose the thread Um, let's think about football. How long is a football game? 90 minutes, right? It's not a surprise that a game is 90 minutes, because we like relatively short spans. Um, uh, it, it's more exciting, it's more engaging for us if something's 90 minutes. If you imagine a, a football game that lasts seven years, that's not gonna be a very interesting football game. And also, it doesn't take place on one pitch. It takes place on 140 pitches. And it lasts seven years, and y…

AI assessment note: “meaningful work is really work where you can feel that in some way”

Q Do you think the desire for meaningful work is a new phenomenon? We mentioned earlier, hey, people were happy just kind of going about their daily lives working on a field, and the idea of meaning.

A Well, I, I think I would say that, um, the process of modern labor have, um, made more work seem meaningless than ever before. So it's not so much that we want more meaning, it's that quite naturally, without anyone meaning to, modern industrial processes have drained many jobs Of their meaning. And so, you know, it's the quintessential sort of Kafkaesque system of, of, of a lone bureaucrat in a vast system. The bureaucrat has forgotten what they're doing. They don't, they don't know the wider whole of which they're a part. And, and the kind of despair sinks in. Um, we're able to lead terribly disembodied lives. You give somebody a credit card and say, right, just, you know, you lead a life, you don't have to talk to anyone. You can just lead a kind of life which, which doesn't Connect you with anything or anyone, and so it leads to this kind of alienation, which is a feature of the modern workplace as well.

AI assessment note: “So it's not so much that we want more meaning, it's that quite naturally”

Q You mentioned the word fair, and I did want to touch on that, because, like, meritocracy is important. How do you feel when I say meritocracy in society today?

A You know, politicians on left and right are very united in the idea that Meritocracy is what we want to build. We want a, we want a meritocratic society, because that seems like the best thing. In other words, a society where, depending on your talent and your energy and your skill, you will rise, and, um, and therefore nothing should hold you back. It's opposed to the kind of old aristocratic model of, like, you will rise because your parents rose, and if they didn't, forget it. And that seems patently unfair. And it's a beautiful idea. It really is a very beautiful idea. It's a relatively novel idea, but it's also an idea with some difficulties In the tail. Sting in the tail. Because if you really believe in a world in which everyone who gets to the top deserves to get to the top, you have to believe in a world in which those who get to the bottom deserve to be at the bottom. Now we're back to the concept of a loser. And so, so, you know, this is where the whole notion of human agency plays into political theory, and whether somebody's right wing or left wing has a lot to do with where they stand on that issue. Um, and traditionally, of course, Europe has stood more to the left, And the United States has stood more to the right. And before these become political positions, they start off as philosophical positions about human agency and how much we direct, how much we're able…

AI assessment note: “it's a beautiful idea... but it's also an idea with some difficulties”

Q You mentioned gambling, the thrill, they often show the excitement, the, the, the, the spinning of the roulette wheel and the euphoria. Totally agree. Is there anything that should change then in terms of advertising if you had a magic wand?

A Really what advertising should do is to give us a more, um, Honest, um, definition of what bit of the human, of human suffering it's actually able to solve. So in other words, the watch is not going to solve your love life. So to show a couple having a happy dinner, that's not right, because there's nothing about that watch and a happy dinner. There's no connection at all. So please don't connect it. And the audience should be trained, you know, should be taught how to decode these adverts so that we don't fall for these things, because we do. We fall Extraordinarily, you know, we, we buy a bar of soap because that soap has been magically associated with calm and order. Now, calm and order are fantastic things. There's very little relationship between this, this fancy soap and calm and order. Um, really what you should be doing is probably taking a philosophy class.

AI assessment note: “what advertising should do is to give us a more, um, Honest, um, definition”

Q One thing I really struggle with managing teams today is should you bring your full self to work?

A I don't think you should bring your full self anywhere, because if we really think about what your full self is, it includes, you know, infantile bits of you, bits of you when you were two, bits of you that are full of rage, bits of you that are full of envy and bitterness and confusion and et cetera, and things that are really very arduous to, to put in front of other people. So I think the notion of, of being yourself is a really, You know, I know there's a lot of sympathy if somebody's in a relationship and, or been in a relationship, and then, and then they say to their friends, you know, I had to end the relationship, I had to get out because, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't being seen for who I really am. And you want to go, okay, I kind of get your point, but is it, is it always a good idea to be seen for who you really are? Um, I think a really loving perspective on somebody is to say, is to think, I can see who this person wants to be. I can see who this person aims to be, and I'm going to focus on that, not necessarily who they are at all points. Um, and one can slightly be a bit deaf or a bit blind, should be, um, to certain aspects that are, Perhaps true, but, um, uncomfortably so, and one might want to glance over.

AI assessment note: “I don't think you should bring your full self anywhere”

Q But is this not an inherent bug of capitalism? Because there's no way I'm going to show my Bacardi with this student sitting alone in sadness in the dark.

A Well, Harry, let me, let me take an optimistic view. So the pessimistic view of capitalism is We cannot possibly have an economy that flourishes while addressing people's true needs, because everybody will just stay home and not buy anything. Um, and so therefore the only way in which we can get a flourishing economy is to sort of con people into buying things they don't really need at a, at a highly accelerated rate. I don't think that's true. I think that is too pessimistic. I think there are constantly things that are missing from our lives that are both genuine And for which a business could be invented. Every time encounter any kind of unhappiness, you're encountering, ah, something that's a business idea that might not have come to fruition. So, sometimes people go, you know, capitalism's finished, we've got everything we need. We haven't. Run through an average day. Go through an average day and think of all the things that are missing. Literally, try and keep a note. Everything that's missing in your life at, at, in course of an average day. So you wake up in the morning and You're hungry, so you go to the kitchen, and you have 17 kinds of breakfast cereal. That suggests that probably you should not become an entrepreneur of breakfast cereals, because we kind of got enough, and so that's not, not great. But a minute later, your partner comes in, and they say something i…

AI assessment note: “I don't think that's true. I think that is too pessimistic.”

Q Is the status element like a lack of respect for ourselves? Like we need other people to recognize us because we don't recognize ourselves as being good enough?

A Yes, and, and of course people are, um, different in, you know, the, the amount of estimation that they have independently of others. So we all know people who are fairly, you know, we call them robust. In other words, um, they don't fold simply because the crowd is not acclaiming them. Sometimes they might even be emboldened. They might feel thrilled by the disdain of the majority. But, you know, they can maintain self-belief despite an absence of adulation. And then we know at the other end of the spectrum, people who will literally not be able to choose what to have for lunch without aligning their taste with yours. So worried are they about the consequences of in any way diverging from the views of others. We call these people people pleasers, um, Yes, men or women. Uh, you know, these are people who, for whom any departure from external, uh, the external verdict is going to be extremely dangerous. And, you know, and on the whole, psychologists would argue, you know, I think it's almost common sense, that the amount of independence that you're capable of in adulthood is, um, directly related to the amount of love and esteem you were given as a child from people who esteemed you For yourself, as opposed to for anything that you did. So, um, you know, whenever you see a very robust individual who seems not to care what others are thinking of them, probably there's somebody wh…

AI assessment note: “Yes, and, and of course people are, um, different in”

Q It goes back to the element of status and others perception around you and how you think people will think if you ask the question of what is a very basic or not a basic question that you are fearful of asking. Is it bad to be status driven?

A I think, you know, bad is a, is a, is a loaded term. I think it can make one, um, it can be quite exhausting, because if you think about, you know, what, what you might need to do in order to get status, um, it may not be in line with what you, in other parts of your personality, are after. So, um, it can be an exhausting and slightly futile pursuit. Also because, as we know from anyone who's You know, sought fame, um, which is kind of the extreme end of status seeking. Fame generally doesn't deliver on its promises because, you know, what the fame seeking person wants is, is love, respect, dignity, and what they find instead is envy, insecurity, um, backlash, etc. And so the capacity to be anonymous and to bear anonymity is, you know, rather good. A school of life which I run, we always say that Um, a marker of good parenting is that your child doesn't have any wish to be famous. And, you know, that's probably a good sign.

AI assessment note: “bad is a, is a, is a loaded term. I think it can make one... quite exhausting”

Q How is that, like, unconsciously directed? I'm just interested because that would be a message that I would give consciously.

A Um, I think it comes from your whole, the whole orientation. I mean, first of all, let's just accept that things do happen between people that don't, um, have words involved. I mean, it's quite, it's quite odd because you think, surely the only way in which I can communicate with another person Is, is to say something to them. But that's not, or say something direct to them. But there's lots of indirect ways in which one person can influence another by suggesting what would make them happy, what they believe in. Um, you don't have to, you know, you can, you can talk about one thing and actually be talking about another. And when children grow up in families, that the messages are, you know, children get very good at sensing what their parents believe without the parent having spelt it out. You just, You kind of know, because there are little micro moments, constantly, that say, well, if my parent believed this about, you know, how to store butter in the fridge, probably means that they're also going to think this or that about whatever. So, you know, suppositions can be made. And anyway, in that way, messages get sent.

AI assessment note: “children get very good at sensing what their parents believe without the parent having spelt”

Q Do you think the desire for meaningful work is a new phenomenon? We mentioned earlier, hey, people were happy just kind of going about their daily lives working on a field, and the idea of meaning.

A Well, I, I think I would say that, um, the process of modern labor have, um, made more work seem meaningless than ever before. So it's not so much that we want more meaning, it's that quite naturally, without anyone meaning to, modern industrial processes have drained many jobs Of their meaning. And so, you know, it's the quintessential sort of Kafkaesque system of, of, of a lone bureaucrat in a vast system. The bureaucrat has forgotten what they're doing. They don't, they don't know the wider whole of which they're a part. And, and the kind of despair sinks in. Um, we're able to lead terribly disembodied lives. You give somebody a credit card and say, right, just, you know, you lead a life, you don't have to talk to anyone. You can just lead a kind of life which, which doesn't Connect you with anything or anyone, and so it leads to this kind of alienation, which is a feature of the modern workplace as well.

AI assessment note: “it's not so much that we want more meaning, it's that”

Q Is this worse than ever before because of social media, because of likes, the counting of likes, the wider recognition of, oh my gosh, it got a thousand likes. It went viral. Have, is this worse than ever today?

A Probably is. You know, it's been getting worse ever since we moved to large cities, which, you know, depending on what part of the world, you know, it's a, it's an urban phenomenon. It's, it's a modern phenomenon. It's, um, whenever you dislocate people from settled, um, village, Rural life where people are essentially defined by a much narrower, much more stable group of people. They'll go, oh, you know, um, and also there's a limit to your achievement. So, so, you know, the sky's not the limit. It's like, you're gonna roughly do what your parents did. Uh, these things keep a lid on some of this restlessness. So I think, you know, the defining, um, mood of modernity, hyper-modernity is anxiety. Um, you know, your business, business generally thrives. What we mean by anxiety is an uncertainty about the future, both in an exciting and, ah, a worrying, ah, direction. But the point is the future is uncertain. We, we no longer believe that we live in cyclical time. For most of history, people have believed in cyclical time. In other words, that history just repeats itself. We don't believe that now. The seasons may repeat themselves, but that's about the only thing that does. Everything else, you know, think of the way the media is always reporting the new, the novel, um, And this has kind of colored our deep insides and our, our psyches. And yes, so are we more restless than ever …

AI assessment note: “Probably is. You know, it's been getting worse ever since we moved to large cities”

Q Do you agree with the removal from cyclicality of life? You know, Ray Dalio has written a book in terms of how we look at, you know, I think it was in the Actually, although COVID seemed completely, uh, unique in terms of its impact on humanity, actually, it's cyclical. And there was another one in the 1700. Is this actually still within cycles?

A Well, I mean, I think, um, in many ways, yes, but also it's tremendously helpful, I think, for us as individuals to look out for these patterns because, um, well, it simplifies life. As, as we know, whenever you see a pattern, what you're essentially doing is removing, um, The unfamiliar and the possibly dangerous from a situation because you're thinking, ah, okay, I know what this is going to be like or what this is like. I mean, we, we get this with, with people, don't we? After a certain age, you think, I've met this person before. Um, of course you haven't met exactly that person, but you've met someone a bit like them before, because there are only so many human types. And ultimately there are only so many human situations in many, many cases. I mean, they say, you know, literary theorists like to say there are only eight stories in the world. There may be 12, there may be 15, but there are not a thousand. I think that's the point. To be able to spot these patterns, I think, calms us down, because one of the ills of the modern age is this belief that we are always in unparalleled, uncharted waters, and that's an exhausting, and I think untrue, um, uh, you know, um, perspective on things. I mean, for example, you know, people were filming at the time of the American election, a lot of doubts about where America's going, etc. You know, a Roman historian would go, oh, we've b…

AI assessment note: “in many ways, yes, but also it's tremendously helpful, I think, for us”

Q comes from the ambiguity of not knowing what's to come, I think as a leader today, Right. Well, then I must be clear. I must be very direct, and know the answer, and show the way. The trouble is, I don't always know the answer. And so, should we be confidently directing the crowd, even though we don't know the answer, or is it okay to say, I don't know?

A Of course, I mean, you know, Socrates, go back to ancient Greece, Socrates, apparently the wisest man, Uh, in, uh, in the ancient world was asked, you know, on what basis his wisdom rested? And he said, because I know that I don't know. And so unlike, you know, his whole, whole, the birth of Western philosophy is the idea that by admitting and sensing one's ignorance, one can actually make progress. That the enemy of, of progress are people who think they know the answer. And that, you know, has to be the case that in, in many situations that a naive inquiry is, um, is often the gateway to, Serious discoveries. And, you know, people who are leaders in their field often have about them, um, a courage in asking the so-called obvious question, which isn't obvious at all. They're able to put themselves in the shoes and they're able to inhabit without shame the position of someone who doesn't know, doesn't understand. So they might stick up their hand and go, what's everybody saying? You know, we, we think we know what we're talking about. Do we? What, you know, and questioning from first premises. These are often very useful moves.

AI assessment note: “by admitting and sensing one's ignorance, one can actually make progress.”

Q It's why the Greeks had the unbundling of the gods, isn't it? The god of sun. Right. Whether it was lucky that we won because the sun shone on us.

A Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and, and you know, the Greeks are obsessed by, by hubris, by the concept of forgetting The, the role of divine intervention. That's, that's the definition of hubris. Um, and I was thinking that you could, you are the master of your fate. That, that is, that, you know, all Greek legends, histories are all about this. It's, it's only ever about human arrogance. So clearly they were tempted by this. We've gone hook, line, and sinker for this temptation. Anyway, let's come back to this, this concept of loser. So, so for example, the Romans were obsessed by the goddess of fortune, Fortuna, all around Italy. All around the Italian peninsula, they had shrines, the goddess of Fortuna. If your ship came in, if you were a merchant, if you were a venture capitalist in ancient Rome, um, and things did, things went well, they had venture capitalists, um, uh, more or less. Uh, if things went well, you would immediately go and thank the goddess of fortune because you knew it wasn't really you. I mean, you think it's all you.

AI assessment note: “Absolutely. Absolutely. Um, and, and you know, the Greeks are obsessed by, by hubris”

Q You mentioned the word fair, and I did want to touch on that, because, like, meritocracy is important. How do you feel when I say meritocracy in society today?

A You know, politicians on left and right are very united in the idea that Meritocracy is what we want to build. We want a, we want a meritocratic society, because that seems like the best thing. In other words, a society where, depending on your talent and your energy and your skill, you will rise, and, um, and therefore nothing should hold you back. It's opposed to the kind of old aristocratic model of, like, you will rise because your parents rose, and if they didn't, forget it. And that seems patently unfair. And it's a beautiful idea. It really is a very beautiful idea. It's a relatively novel idea, but it's also an idea with some difficulties In the tail. Sting in the tail. Because if you really believe in a world in which everyone who gets to the top deserves to get to the top, you have to believe in a world in which those who get to the bottom deserve to be at the bottom. Now we're back to the concept of a loser. And so, so, you know, this is where the whole notion of human agency plays into political theory, and whether somebody's right wing or left wing has a lot to do with where they stand on that issue. Um, and traditionally, of course, Europe has stood more to the left, And the United States has stood more to the right. And before these become political positions, they start off as philosophical positions about human agency and how much we direct, how much we're able…

AI assessment note: “it's also an idea with some difficulties In the tail. Sting in the tail.”

Q What do you think is the most valuable feature that religion brought?

A Well, I think that it relativized humanity. It, it placed human beings within a broader context. And so, you know, in every pre-modern society, um, There is something that's non-human that's greater than everything human. So even the king or the queen is secondary to the god or, or some kind of supernatural force. And you might say, well, who cares? What, what's the point of that? Well, what it does is relativize everybody. Um, and the problem with modern society is that everybody wants to be big. Um, everybody wants to matter. There's a kind of impulse in everyone to be seen and noticed, and there's constant, therefore, humiliation. And so people are constantly on the edge of feeling that their size has not been respected. You know, you go to a hotel and you say, you know, I got my room booked, and they say, well, I'm sorry, you know, we, we don't have anyone in that name, and you feel crushed, and people don't, don't respect you, or you go to a restaurant, you're not, you know, treated with dignity, et cetera, and people get tremendously upset, or you're, you're in a car, and someone cuts you up and doesn't give you the respect that you feel you're owed. And the thing about religions is that they set us in a broader context where It becomes, I want to say, pleasurable to be small. Um, you feel that you're a tiny grain of sand within a vast context, and that relaxes you from t…

AI assessment note: “I think that it relativized humanity. It, it placed human beings within a broader context.”

Q You might not be at that company. You might not be alive. Fingers crossed you will be, but it is so long. For me as a leader, and for anyone as a leader, where there is very long feedback loops, but gosh, I want my people to be Feeling like they are working on meaningful work. Is there anything that I can do or I should, I should think about?

A I called it artistic problem a minute ago. It's, you know, you also define it as a problem of the imagination that people literally forget. Um, I mean, storytellers, you know, if somebody writes a very long novel, halfway through often people go, well, so we've just seen that so-and-so, you know, went to the house. And so there's a kind of recap of what happened or a, A reminder. And I think, you know, we need this in, in our own lives, often a reminder of who we are, where we're going, what the trajectory is, and an evocation of it, um, uh, through imaginative means. So you might want to, you know, investment that you made seven years ago, you might want to show some pictures, show film, go make a visit to, to the place that, you know, just to kind of bring it back to life, um, what's actually happened.

AI assessment note: “you might want to show some pictures, show film, go make a visit”

Q And I think you don't like the word calling or disagree with calling as a notion. Why is that?

A Well, I think calling makes it seem too distinct. You know, I mean, literally in this religious sense, like you're walking down the street and suddenly you hear a voice of an angel who says, you know, you must go to the next city and declare a new religion or something. And many people have never heard that voice and they're still looking out for that voice. You know, where is it? I think if you tell people If you're a functioning human being, you're going to hear a voice saying, go and become a doctor, or go and become a priest, or go and become a gardener. They'll get terribly confused because they're not going to hear it. So that's my problem with it, that it's, it's, um, it's unnecessarily depressing. So rather than saying you're going to hear a voice that's going to say something, I think it's much better to say you're going to get moments of heightened interest, and you should, that doesn't contribute to a job, but like you were saying a minute ago, It's, it's a part of an answer to the kind of job that you should do, but you have to assemble it. It's not going to come ready made like a sort of, as an external voice. You have to assemble, um, from fragments, a whole working identity and mission.

AI assessment note: “Well, I think calling makes it seem too distinct.”

Q One thing I really struggle with managing teams today is should you bring your full self to work?

A I don't think you should bring your full self anywhere, because if we really think about what your full self is, it includes, you know, infantile bits of you, bits of you when you were two, bits of you that are full of rage, bits of you that are full of envy and bitterness and confusion and et cetera, and things that are really very arduous to, to put in front of other people. So I think the notion of, of being yourself is a really, You know, I know there's a lot of sympathy if somebody's in a relationship and, or been in a relationship, and then, and then they say to their friends, you know, I had to end the relationship, I had to get out because, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't being seen for who I really am. And you want to go, okay, I kind of get your point, but is it, is it always a good idea to be seen for who you really are? Um, I think a really loving perspective on somebody is to say, is to think, I can see who this person wants to be. I can see who this person aims to be, and I'm going to focus on that, not necessarily who they are at all points. Um, and one can slightly be a bit deaf or a bit blind, should be, um, to certain aspects that are, Perhaps true, but, um, uncomfortably so, and one might want to glance over.

AI assessment note: “I don't think you should bring your full self anywhere”

Q You mentioned gambling, the thrill, they often show the excitement, the, the, the, the spinning of the roulette wheel and the euphoria. Totally agree. Is there anything that should change then in terms of advertising if you had a magic wand?

A Really what advertising should do is to give us a more, um, Honest, um, definition of what bit of the human, of human suffering it's actually able to solve. So in other words, the watch is not going to solve your love life. So to show a couple having a happy dinner, that's not right, because there's nothing about that watch and a happy dinner. There's no connection at all. So please don't connect it. And the audience should be trained, you know, should be taught how to decode these adverts so that we don't fall for these things, because we do. We fall Extraordinarily, you know, we, we buy a bar of soap because that soap has been magically associated with calm and order. Now, calm and order are fantastic things. There's very little relationship between this, this fancy soap and calm and order. Um, really what you should be doing is probably taking a philosophy class.

AI assessment note: “Really what advertising should do is to give us a more, um, Honest, um, definition”

Q But is this not an inherent bug of capitalism? Because there's no way I'm going to show my Bacardi with this student sitting alone in sadness in the dark.

A Well, Harry, let me, let me take an optimistic view. So the pessimistic view of capitalism is We cannot possibly have an economy that flourishes while addressing people's true needs, because everybody will just stay home and not buy anything. Um, and so therefore the only way in which we can get a flourishing economy is to sort of con people into buying things they don't really need at a, at a highly accelerated rate. I don't think that's true. I think that is too pessimistic. I think there are constantly things that are missing from our lives that are both genuine And for which a business could be invented. Every time encounter any kind of unhappiness, you're encountering, ah, something that's a business idea that might not have come to fruition. So, sometimes people go, you know, capitalism's finished, we've got everything we need. We haven't. Run through an average day. Go through an average day and think of all the things that are missing. Literally, try and keep a note. Everything that's missing in your life at, at, in course of an average day. So you wake up in the morning and You're hungry, so you go to the kitchen, and you have 17 kinds of breakfast cereal. That suggests that probably you should not become an entrepreneur of breakfast cereals, because we kind of got enough, and so that's not, not great. But a minute later, your partner comes in, and they say something i…

AI assessment note: “I don't think that's true. I think that is too pessimistic.”

Q We've been told everyone can be an entrepreneur. Do you believe everyone is an entrepreneur, or do you think entrepreneurs are born?

A It depends how you define the word entrepreneur. I think that entrepreneurial opportunity, and to be able to see entrepreneurial opportunity, is, is a faculty that exists in a latent form inside everybody. Whether it's then developed is, is a different thing. But I think really what we mean by this is, is an interest in solving new problems. Solving problems. And You know, the entrepreneurs I've met are relentless at identifying and thinking in depth about things that have not yet been solved. I know, of course, that there's many bits of the entrepreneurial puzzle, and very often people we call entrepreneurs are really one half of a, of a team. Um, there might be lots of other people, and, um, they might be the visionary person, but there's an accountant somewhere in the background, there's a people person somewhere in the background, et cetera, and they make the thing Work. So often what we mean by that sort of basic stage of entrepreneurism is it's, it's, it is a, uh, a visionary thing where you see, it's a kind of utopian vision. It's like, how should the world be? Not what is it like now? What should the world be? And you know, it could be many things. What should the world be like in a state agency? What should the world be like in the world of, I don't know, um, shoes to take to the beach or whatever it is, but you're, you're sort of seeing a, um, a version of a world tha…

AI assessment note: “faculty that exists in a latent form inside everybody”

Q Now, I would love to start. We live in this kind of social media driven world, and I also live in this financial driven world. And at the core of both is status. And so I want to start with how do you define status and why do we want it so much?

A Well, let's start with the second bit. I think we want status, um, If this doesn't sound too weird, for love. I don't mean sexual love or romantic love. I mean love in a broad sense. Esteem, um, friendship, recognition. Um, you know, we live in a world where what you do defines who you are. Um, that's a relatively modern way of doing things. It wasn't always the case. But, you know, nowadays, first time you meet somebody, they will immediately ask you, what do you do according to how you answer that? You'll either be acclaimed and, you know, that's very interesting, or you'll be left behind by the peanuts and you'll be made to feel that you don't really exist. You will become an invisible, uh, person. So we want status for, you know, I mean, very often material ends, but it's not really the material ends that we want. It's the, it's the, it's the love and respect and esteem that comes with those ends. I mean, if you said to somebody, right, you've got a choice. Either we give you, you know, four hundred million pounds a year, But everyone who looks at you will treat you like a pariah, will treat you with, you know, ignominy, you'll, you'll, you'll feel, you'll feel shame, etc. But, four hundred million pounds a year, or you can live on 15,000 pounds a year, and whenever, wherever you go, people will greet you with warmth, with adulation, with love, with respect, etc. Which one …

AI assessment note: “I think we want status, um, If this doesn't sound too weird, for love.”